[ubuntu-us-ma] Interactive Whiteboard

[Brian DeLacey]

One of Johnny Lee's Wii projects <http://johnnylee.net/projects/wii/> used a
laptop screen in a way that might be similar to your tablet idea. He shows
it about three minutes into this
video<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s5EvhHy7eQ>
 .
Another project leveraging those Wii ideas is here:
http://www.smoothboard.net/  The number of options is increasing as the
hardware gets more powerful and less expensive.

I've experimented with Wii remote accelerometer and button readings with
Ubuntu. I'll demo this and mesh networking using Jaunty in a quick "Open
Floor" lightning talk at this Thursday's
meeting<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MassachusettsTeam/Meetings/Minutes/2009-02-26>
 .

Brian


On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 10:29 PM, Danny Piccirillo <
danny.piccirillo at ubuntu.com> wrote:

> That did cross my mind but i figured it wasn't worth the extra hardware and
> it seemed to be a lot of work to set up (although i admit i didn't really
> look that much into it). That's why i thought just using tablets would be a
> much better idea.
>
> On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 10:26 PM, Brian DeLacey <bdelacey at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Here's a low-cost way to do that sort of thing using a Wii remote:  <http://www.cs.cmu.edu/%7Ejohnny/projects/wii/>
>> http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/<http://www.cs.cmu.edu/%7Ejohnny/projects/wii/>
>> There's a related video here:
>> http://www.alltogetherwecan.com/2009/01/31/wiimote-whiteboard-in-education-a-tutorial/
>>
>> There's a lot of potential with the Wii remote ...
>>
>> Brian
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 10:01 PM, Danny Piccirillo <
>> danny.piccirillo at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> What a nightmare...
>>>
>>> My school keeps investing money into testing out these things. They want
>>> to make a decision on which to buy a big order of. Basically, interactive
>>> whiteboards let teachers draw on the screen from the front of the room and
>>> save their lessons, etc. My school is faced with sales pitch after sales
>>> pitch and all the teachers are excited so it seems. We'd need to buy their
>>> proprietary hardware and software, train teachers, etc. I'm trying really
>>> hard to make the case that this is a really really bad idea. The technology
>>> is pretty new (well, maybe it's been around, but these solutions are not
>>> mature), so it will all be outdated soon.
>>>
>>> Teachers get excited about every new piece of technology with any new and
>>> uselesss features. They want to use it for the sake of using it, regardless
>>> of whether they can use it effectively. Students are not any more engaged,
>>> if not less, when the only new aspect of their lesson is being able to click
>>> on a train and hearing it go CHOOCHOO (powerpoint-- i mean,
>>> openoffice.org can already do that...). Whether or not teachers use
>>> interactive whiteboards, tablets, or *the tools already available*, they
>>> need to be able to do so effectively. Throwing money into a new piece of
>>> technology won't fix that at all...
>>>
>>> I'm trying to propose a better long term solution and find free software
>>> alternatives to this. My suggestion was using a tablet PC and software that
>>> allows you to draw on the screen. Simple screenshots (or screencasts) can be
>>> used to save lessons, if nothing more advanced is already available. This is
>>> also a great place to fit Ubuntu in the classroom since they'll be investing
>>> in new computers for this anyways.
>>>
>>> SO, i need help coming up with the best alternative to this interactive
>>> whiteboard crap. Please let me know if you have any ideas!
>>>
>>> P.S. Handwriting recognition seems to be something that is included in
>>> some applications for tablets...shouldn't there be some sort of framework or
>>> something for this so that any application can use it? Does this already
>>> exist or is there a good place to suggest this?
>>>
>>> Thanks so much!
>>> .danny
>>>
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>>
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